In industrial and commercial laundry facilities, textile materials such as sheets, towels, wipes, garments, table cloths, etc. are often laundered at elevated temperatures at alkaline pH. Alkalinity can be provided through a single alkaline detergent, or alternatively alkalinity can be provided from one product, while the other detergent components, including surfactants, chelants, water conditioners and/or other detergent materials are provided in a second product. In other markets, textile materials are often laundered with neutral detergents with a separate alkaline product combined in a wash. Detergents can be combined in a laundry application with various additional components such as bleaches, brightening agents, anti-redeposition agents, etc. that are used to enhance the appearance of the resulting textile materials. Various additional components may optionally be dosed separately from the alkaline detergent, and will either be mixed together in the laundry wash bath or in a separate laundry bath liquor. For example, in some laundry applications there are discrete dosing and rinsing steps where there is a rinse between a detergent and bleach step. In other laundry applications, such as a tunnel washer, various addition steps employing mixing of the components. In each of these applications at the end of the cycle, the textile materials that have been treated with an alkaline detergent are typically treated with a commercial or industrial sour composition that contains acid components for neutralizing alkaline residues on the fabric to enhance skin compatibility.
In a conventional, industrial laundry washing facility, textile materials can be subjected to several treatment steps in an industrial sized laundry washing machine to provide antimicrobial efficacy. Exemplary treatment steps include a presoak step, a wash step that often occurs at a pH of about 11 to 12, a rinse step and/or multiple rinse steps for the removal of soil containing wash liquor which incrementally lower the pH, and a sour step that brings the final pH to about 5 to 7, and an extract step that often involves spinning the textiles to remove water. An antimicrobial composition can be applied concurrently with the detergent, such as an all-in-one product for powders and solids or concurrent dosing of distinct products, immediately following the detergent step or during the sour step where it is afforded a minimum contact time in the absence of other cleaning chemicals. Laundry applications can vary between concurrent dosing of detergent and other cleaning chemicals.
There remains a need to improve the industrial laundry washing techniques and provide enhanced efficacy along with other improvements, such as a reduction in processing time, cost of materials, material consumption, energy costs, and water consumption. Accordingly, it is an objective of the methods to improve on one or more of these aspects of laundry washing techniques. It is a further objective to improve the efficacy of antimicrobial and bleaching of laundry through the use of peroxyformic acid compositions.
An object of the methods is to enhance bleaching efficacy for bleaching of laundry articles by employing a peroxyformic acid composition.
Other objects, advantages and features of the present invention will become apparent from the following specification taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.